The Walking Dead's Laurie Holden – Andrea Is 'In A Very Dangerous Position'

March 9, 2013 11:29 AM EDT

Andrea has hit some choppy waters on “The Walking Dead.”

Two weeks ago on the AMC show, the character, played by actress Laurie Holden, went to see her old group, who she recently had come to discover were living at the nearby prison. But, when she got there, she was tossed to the ground, surrounded by guns and frisked before she was allowed inside.

Once inside the prison, she was shocked to learn about the dirty misdeeds of her zombie apocalypse boyfriend – The Governor. She also had to face Michonne (Danai Gurira), who was still sore over Andrea’s decision earlier in the season to stay at Woodbury, instead of head back out into the zombie-wilderness together.

When Andrea finally returned to the only place that she was welcome – Woodbury – she ended the episode unable to go through with her plan to kill The Governor while he slept. But, plenty of fans are wondering was he awake, did he see her and how much trouble is she in for!

With the show returning with a full cast episode this week (following last week’s standalone, “Clear”) AccessHollywood.com, spoke with Laurie about filming some of Andrea’s traumatic moments from her last episode, and how dangerous things could get for her character in the weeks ahead.

AccessHollywood.com: When the guns were pulled on Andrea at the prison — that was so emotional. Talk about that scene and filming it because I think Norman Reedus (who plays Daryl Dixon) said there were a lot of hugs on that day for you.

Laurie Holden: It’s great storytelling because it’s not what you expected. It’s not what Andrea expected. And to shoot the scene where I’m going in expecting to come home and embrace my family and have them throw me to the ground and frisk me and get in my face and accuse me of all of these things, it was tough, and it was a few scenes of it and it was over a few days… I know that they all love me. ‘The Walking Dead’ cast — we’re all a family and that’s why they were hugging me at the end because I think they felt so bad. It’s very hard to act that way towards someone that you really care for in real life. It’s like when Andrea was mean to Dale, that was like the hardest acting for me because I love Jeff DeMunn and it used to make my skin crawl every time they’d write a scene where Andrea had to be mean to Dale. I was like, ‘Please, writers, please let her [have] redemption. Let them make up, let her honor him because I can’t continue this.’ So it’s that kind of a feeling when, as an actor, you’re asked to do something that’s diametrically opposed to how you’re feeling in real life. And we’re a family. We’ve been working together for three years, so it’s not like a normal film set where you show up and you have a certain emotion, but you don’t know the person you’re opposite. We’re like brothers and sisters.

Access: There’s another scene with you and Danai (Andrea and Michonne in the yard by themselves), which is just so quiet. Was that hard to film on the day?

Laurie: The beauty of ‘The Walking Dead’ and the beauty of being on a television show for a while, is that, it’s your backstory, it’s part of what you are, it’s what you carry with you every day. And Danai and I built such a back story with each other off screen and what little time we had on screen, we both had real clear points of view and were carrying a lot of hurt on that day. That scene, I haven’t watched it, but it broke my heart because there’s nothing worse than hearing that your best friend feels betrayed by you.

Access: When your character left Woodbury, there’s almost a moment where it seemed like Andrea could have turned and asked or begged to stay – when Rick shows her a little bit of kindness by handing her a gun and giving her a car.

Laurie: Well, first of all, they didn’t welcome her to stay… There was not an open invitation. She was not embraced, but Rick extended an olive branch and that was a big move for him. And I don’t think Andrea knew at that point what she was going to do, but I think Carol planted a seed and that the entire way back to Woodbury, she was mulling it over.

Access: She gets back to the prison and she gets back together with the Governor. When they kiss for the first time after she’s back, do you think she means it?

Laurie: I think that he makes her sick and I think that she thinks that she can go through with it and so she tries to play him and then, at the end of the day, she wakes up. I mean, that was not something she enjoyed. That was (laughs)… that was taking one for the team. She basically was taking Carol’s advice, but at the end of the day, when she woke up and stood over his bed with the knife, her sense of humanity, her conscience, her moral fortitude got in the way and she just could not do it.

Access: Maybe she thinks she can change this guy. She’s seen different sides to him. She saw him crying over his zombie daughter.

Laurie: Well that’s the thing. I don’t think it’s about changing him. I think it’s about reaching that part of humanity that was once there, reaching that man that lost his wife, that loved his daughter and the goodness that was once there, because this apocalypse has changed people.

Access: What’s next for her Andrea now because I would be worried about her survival rate. She’s sleeping with the enemy. She kind of wants to kill him, we don’t know if he saw her holding the knife. And, she’s being watched by Milton…

Laurie: I think she’s in a very dangerous position. Yeah, she’s walking on a tight rope.

Access: What kind of things are we going to see from Andrea going forward?

Laurie: Turmoil, active turmoil.

Access: Tyreese’s group has just come to Woodbury — could this potentially be an alliance that she could look into?

Laurie: It could be. I mean, she doesn’t know anything about Tyreese and Sasha. These are just people that she met in the woods that were having a rough time and they needed food and shelter and safety. And she helped guide them — through Milton — back to Woodbury, but that remains to be seen. Those people don’t know each other yet.

Access: By the way, are you rooting for Carol-Daryl?

Laurie: I feel like they already are Carol-Daryl. I don’t think that they need to make out or do anything for them not to be Carol-Daryl. I think they have such incredible chemistry and they have such — they’re like Andrea and Michonne. I feel like they have such a love and such a like beauty about the way that they are with one another — like they finish each other’s sentences — that I think they already are ‘Carol & Daryl.’

“The Walking Dead” airs Sunday nights at 9 PM on AMC.

-- Jolie Lash

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